This common lab is staffed with a joint team of CEA-Leti and ASELTA personnel. Part of this collaboration will be done inside the multi-partner IMAGINE program, which is designed to develop maskless lithography for IC manufacturing.

Launched in November 2009, ASELTA Nanographics develops software that reduces production costs for chips at the 32nm node and beyond by improving fab-process precision, including cycle time and lithography-image quality.

“ASELTA is excited about funding a joint laboratory with CEA-Leti in order to get access to leading edge e-beam equipment and validate its work on e-beam proximity effects correction,” said Serdar Manakli, ASELTA CEO. “E-beam proximity effects have been under-estimated so far. Our experience has proven that with our unique expertise, we can provide our customers with dramatic productivity improvement and lifetime extension of current equipment. The fact that more and more partners are joining partnership programs like IMAGINE is a validation of our vision.”

“Launching and supporting startups in one of our main missions and ASELTA is one of the most promising companies to come out of Leti. It is addressing key maskmaking challenges for both critical dimension (CD) control and writing speed,” said Serge Tedesco, CEA-Leti program manager. “Moreover, the growing interest in ML2 has to be supported from the point of view of proximity-effect correction and CEA-Leti, with its industrial IMAGINE program, will provide the right environment.”